The American public-opinion contradiction: Wrong direction, but right incumbents

Exit polling conducted on Election Day last month found that more than 70 percent of voters are unhappy about the direction in which the U.S. is headed. This result is consistent with a poll from later in November in which 70 percent of Americans answered “wrong track” to this question:

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Generally speaking, would you say that things in the country are going in the right direction, or have they pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?

Other surveys show even more widespread dissatisfaction with the nation’s direction.

One would expect from these results that the electorate cleaned house this year — that it threw out many of the bums associated with the status quo. But this isn’t what happened.

In fact, as things stand now not a single incumbent U.S. Senator was voted out of office. Moreover, only one Senate seat — Pennsylvania’s — changed from one party to the other. The Georgia Senate seat is still being contested in a runoff, but the incumbent leads in the polls albeit within the margin of error.

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